Ryan Honick and his service dog, Pico, attempted to leave the Eisenhower Metro station Oct. 12 when a station manager refused to let the pair use an equipment gate and forced them to wait for a manager to arrive.
On Monday, Honick got his revenge after a letter to Metro headquarters and public outcry forced the agency to change its policy related to service dogs and equipment gates, The Washington Post reports.
Honick was born with cerebral palsy. He uses a wheelchair to get around and a service dog to help him do every day tasks. He told the Post he doesn’t like using the regular fare gates because they have clipped his dog in the past and he doesn’t want Pico to become afraid of the Metro.
If Honick’s dog were to become too skittish to enter train stations for fear of getting hit by gates, He would have no other way to get to work, Honick told DCist.com.
Honick requested he be allowed to use the equipment gate, a manually operated swing gate, to avoid the automatic fare gates slamming closed on his dog.
A station manager on duty refused to let Honick and his dog through the gate, saying it was against Metro policy, though people regularly use the equipment gate when regular gates malfunction.
Honick was forced to wait for 30 minutes before a supervisor showed up, and during that time he took to Twitter to express his outrage.
. @wmata employee refusing to let me and my service dog through the emergency gate. Been waiting 20 min for a supervisor. @unsuckdcmetro
— Ryan Honick (@ryanlhonick) October 12, 2015
.@wmata your ADA gate has a sensor. Your emergency gate does not. The former is extremely dangerous for service dog teams. @unsuckdcmetro
— Ryan Honick (@ryanlhonick) October 12, 2015
Nobody should have to wait nearly 30 minutes unable to leave a metro station because common sense failed. @wmata https://t.co/x3aE20f1hg
— Ryan Honick (@ryanlhonick) October 13, 2015
Following the incident, Honick wrote a letter to Metro detailing the incident and asking for a policy change to avoid other people with service dogs going through the same thing.
Metro’s director of ADA policy and planning, Christiaan Blake, responded to Honick’s letter saying the agency created a new standard operating procedure (SOP) allowing people with service animals to use the equipment gates instead of the regular fare gates.
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